Thread on the relationship between early Bolsheviks and Soviet power, arising from this conversation - I'll try to stick to primary sources and reputable historical scholarship, and include references. https://twitter.com/proletkultr/status/1250641107836456961

from the outset, even fellow Bolsheviks such as Lozovskii attacked the Leninist faction “for cheating the toiling masses who had fought for [multiparty] Soviet government only to discover that for reasons unclear to them this government turned out to be purely Bolshevik”

quoted in: A. Rabinowitch, The Bolsheviks In Power: The first year of Soviet rule in Petrograd, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2007, p. 48.

in the 1918 petrograd soviet election, Bolsheviks employed electoral fraud and voter intimidation along with the suppression of Menshevik and SR newspapers until two days before voting. Workers and opposition parties were fully aware of the fraud, but felt that

they couldn't challenge it without putting the legitimacy of soviet power in question, as left SR Spiridonova explained: “We had to be silent about it despite the fact that the indignation of workers...was enormous."

Rabinowitch, Bolsheviks In Power, p. 252.

We see this indignation in the declarations made by workers in the ensuing wave of strikes and protests, eg the Obukhov plant workers who wanted to “clean out and renovate the Soviet” in order that it stop being “a tool for the establishment of an anti-democratic dictatorship"

J. Daly and L. Trofimov (eds. and trans.), Russia in War and Revolution, 1914 – 1922: A Documentary History, Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing Company, 2009, p. 225.

A resolution of the Putilov plant in August 1918 voiced similar concerns, demanding the re-legalization of socialist newspapers, an end to summary executions by the Cheka, and denouncing the arrest of the Left SR delegates at the fifth All Russian Congress of Soviets

The declaration denounces Bolsheviks in the name of Soviets closing lines:
Long live the Soviets of Worker, Red Armymen, and Peasant Deputies!
Long live the dictatorship of the working people!
Down with the dictatorship of individuals!

Daly and Trofimov, Russia in War, p. 232.

The Bolshevik response was state repression. Opposition newspapers were sequentially shut down, giving the Bolsheviks a complete monopoly on the periodical press by late August 1918.

S. B. Smith, Captives of Revolution: The Socialist Revolutionaries and the Bolshevik Dictatorship, 1918-1923, Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011, p. 66.

Bolshevik interference in Soviets inspired a rebellion of the sailors of the Second Baltic Fleet Detachment in October 1918, (4 years before Kronstadt).
Their statement:
"We ourselves have experienced the breakup and arrest of congresses of worker and peasant soviets....

We have witnessed the beating and shooting of often innocent workers, peasants, and sailors... We demand the reestablishment of genuine Soviet power!"

Rabinowitch, Bolsheviks in Power, p. 353.

Cheka units pre-emptively broke strikes, arrested leaders and prevented street rallies. In some cases, like the Obukhov strike I mentioned earlier, where workers were threatening to “drown the Bolsheviks in the Neva”,

Bolshevik authorities simply closed the works and fired all the workers, drafting 300 Sailors from Kronstadt to disarm the workers should they attempt a revolt.

Daly and Trofimov, Russia in War, p. 225.

The mere existence of soviets in the countryside doesn't say much, given that original grassroots councils were superseded by those controlled by small groups of salaried officials, and soviets that regularly dissented were often simply disbanded

See, for example: C. Read, From Tsar to Soviets: The Russian people and their revolution, 1917 -21, p 237, S. Malle, The Economic Organization of War Communism 1918-1921, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002, p. 367.

Bolshevik members who had been content to see out the civil war, but expected Soviet democracy to be reinstated afterwards, left en masse when it became clear that this was not going to happen. Sailors for example, 5,000 of whom revoked their membership in January 1921 alone.

P. Avrich, Kronstadt 1921, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1971, p. 69.

The Kronstadt rebellion itself needs no introduction, but it begs the question, why were they willing to die for the reinstatement of Soviet democracy, if it had remained 'free and open' till Stalin?